Ubuntu 12.10 will include advertisements for products on Amazon. It will look like this - if you search, product suggestions will pop up. This seems like a rather slippery slope to me, and I certainly wouldn't want this on my desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or anywhere else. On the web - fine, I'm on your site, not mine - but my desktop is mine, and mine alone. Not that it matters - open source, someone will disable them. Biggest concern: does this mean my search queries get sent across the web?

No, I am not confused at all. RHEV-M, a core component of RHEV, only recently became Open Source and freed from it's dependence on Windows Server. "

RHEV is virtualization software and management built on various foundations including closed source Qumranet, open source oVirt, and type 1 hypervisor of which numerous OS's have that including Linux with KVM and Windows with Hyper-V. You have confused yourself in believing for some odd reason that RHEV is based on Hyper-V hypervisor by Microsoft but it is in fact based on KVM hypervisor and then uses the other referenced management software already listed above. Red Hat acquired Qumranet in 2008 and yes just open sourced the virtualization technology. This technology is exactly as I previously stated about interoperability, and it is NOT based on Windows.

I am by no means and expert on RHEL nor a certified engineer, however, we do use it at my workplace. Hell, even Wikipedia has the correct information as I stated above, and I quote:

"You have confused yourself in believing for some odd reason that RHEV is based on Hyper-V hypervisor by Microsoft

No, that's not at all what I am saying.

Red Hat acquired Qumranet in 2008 and yes just open sourced the virtualization technology. This technology is exactly as I previously stated about interoperability, and it is NOT based on Windows.

Until RHEV 3 it required a Windows server. The management console was written in C# and only ran on Windows. "

I started using RHEV with version 3, so I do stand corrected that prior to that version, it did require a Windows product in order to manage it.

You have perhaps miscommunicated but you suggested that Red Hat in the enterprise server space has only until recently been dependent upon Microsoft servers for functioning and THAT is why they are successful. That is simply not true. Only one component of their virtualization software 'required' that until they ported it to Java and removed any future need to use a Windows product. Other aspects of their server technology in the enterprise is interoperable with Windows but never was dependent upon it. And prior to the creation of their own virtualization 'product' VMWare and other software tools were used.

So my point still stands that Canonical/Ubuntu could still learn a thing or two about being a successful Linux business from Red Hat/Fedora in their very boundaried way of keeping Red Hat and Fedora separate and yet still connected. Blurring that line by adding Amazon advertisements to the Ubuntu 12.10 distro in order to 'raise' revenues for Canonical will lead to future business and distro failure, IMHO.